


A Kinder Mistletoe

by elissastillstands



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Pure Winter Fluff, Star Trek Secret Santa 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:41:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21879787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elissastillstands/pseuds/elissastillstands
Summary: Michael Burnham and Sylvia Tilly on a planet of snow. Scarves, hot chocolate, mistletoe, and closeness.
Relationships: Keyla Detmer/Joann Owosekun, Michael Burnham/Sylvia Tilly
Comments: 14
Kudos: 58
Collections: Star Trek Secret Santa 2019





	A Kinder Mistletoe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [That_One_Curly_Haired_Fangirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/That_One_Curly_Haired_Fangirl/gifts).



> Hello, That_One_Curly_Haired_Fangirl! You requested Tilly/Burnham fluff, and I hope you enjoy this little story of winter sweetness.

"Snow!" Tilly gasps, hurrying down the Discovery's entry ramp. "Oh my gosh, Michael, look, there's snow—"

Michael is not, by nature, inclined to pouting. By upbringing and acculturation, she is even less so. Nevertheless, if pressed, she might still admit that there is a similar expression tugging at her lips as she trudges back through the exit bay to look for another jacket. 

Stars above, what is it with Earth-raised people and their snow?

"Michael?" Tilly's voice follows her through the bay. Her head pokes through the doors, haloed in the paleness of the snow outside. “Where are you? It's snow, real water snow, we can actually touch it and everything, if we hurry, we can get the diagnostic surveying done in twenty minutes, and then we can—is everything alright, Michael?” she interrupts herself.

“I’m fine, Sylvia,” Michael tells Tilly. “You go on ahead, I’ll just be—”

“It’s the snow, isn’t it?” Tilly hastens back up the entry ramp to Michael’s side. “Michael—I didn’t realize, I’m sorry—”

“It’s fine,” Michael says. She can feel herself flushing at Tilly’s fretting and inwardly grimaces—Commander Michael Burnham, recipient of the Federation’s highest honors, who sparred with _selhats_ as a child, who fought Eridani’s gravity and won, overcome by a few centimeters of frozen precipitation. “I’ve been through extreme survival training, same as any officer on the ship, you know. I’ll be fine.”

Tilly doesn’t heed her. “I know you’ll be fine,” she says, helping Michael with the zippers on the bulky tactical puffer she had chosen. “It’s not an issue of you being fine, it’s the fact that you grew up on an enviro-stable station and then a freaking _desert planet_ ; of course you don’t like cold, wet places.”

“It’s fine,” Michael repeats, but it is less of an objection than she intended.

Tilly’s gloved fingers wrap around Michael’s hands as she tries to zip the front of the puffer up to her chin. “The insulation at the front of these is nothing,” she says, and before Michael can protest, she unwraps the scarf from her own shoulders and bundles it around Michael’s neck.

“What—Sylvia—you need—”

“I went skiing on Europa all the time as a kid. This is nothing,” Tilly says with a scoff. Her face softens as she adjusts the scarf. “Wear it, Michael. Please? I don’t want you to get cold.”

The wool of the scarf is soft beneath her chin and cheeks, still warm from Tilly’s touch. It is knitted—perhaps unevenly so, with yarn in eye-catching shades of yellow and green and pink. It smells a little like coffee and a little like Tilly’s shampoo, the sweet-fruity scents of strawberry and coconut that lingered around their pillows and comforter.

“I know it’s a little—” Tilly gestures vaguely, tugging at the outer band of yellow. “I read a lot about old-fashioned knitting and coding when I was younger, and I got the coding part down pat but I didn’t have the best sense of color-coordination when I was nine—”

Michael clasps Tilly’s hand between both of her own, a smile stretching at her cheeks. Her heart feels a little too big for the space between her ribs. “It’s lovely,” she tells Tilly, pressing a kiss to her cheek. She pulls back, zipping up her puffer the rest of the way, and winks. “Very warm.”

Tilly snorts with laughter, and they walk out into the snow hand-in-hand. The winter sky is so bright and hard that Michael thinks it might ring like a gong at the slightest touch, and Tilly’s delighted voice echoes against it as Michael follows her into the snow-limned forest.

\-----

After they come back to the ship to take a break from the cold, Michael sinks down on one of the padded benches in the main rec room, peeling off the outer layers of her environmental gear. Tilly zeroes in on where Lieutenants Detmer and Owosekun are sitting in a corner of the room, a hot drink dispenser on the table in front of them.

“Keyla—is that—” Michael can hear Tilly asking as she points at the dispenser.

Detmer grins at Tilly. “It is.”

“You are a god among us,” Tilly says in complete seriousness. She fills one cup to the brim, and when Owosekun coughs loudly as she moves to fill another, she announces, “I know, I know, one cup rule, this is for Michael!”

Tilly comes back to the bench with two cups of hot chocolate, topped with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. “They went all out for you,” she tells Michael, her voice gleeful. “Jojo got out the real cream.” She hands Michael one of the cups and starts drinking from the other, sighing happily. "I’d forgotten how good this was. Kay makes the best hot chocolate.”

Michael takes a sip from the drink in her hands. The heat of it radiated through her two layers of gloves, and the rich flavor of chocolate fills her mouth, touched with vanilla and the herbal warmth of cinnamon. She hums in contentment. 

"It reminds me of university," she says.

"University?" Tilly repeats. She finishes off her cup and sets it down with a flourish. "You must have gone to one fancy university if they had hot chocolate like this there." She pauses, tilting her head in consideration, and Michael cannot help but soften her expression as she watches Tilly's curls bouncing in the light, the little furrow of concentration in her brow easing as the earnest curve of her smile grows. "Well, I guess it wouldn't be hard to custom a replicator program for the cinnamon, but normal replicated hot chocolate tastes like it clearly came out of a package—which actually isn't too bad, if you put, like, a bit of half and half or a scoop of ice cream into it."

"Admittedly, I did go to a fancy university." Michael quirks one eyebrow up and stares at Tilly with her flattest expression, which soon dissolves into quiet giggles as Tilly mouths _Vulcan Science Academy, right_ to herself. 

It took Michael years to think of the VSA with anything other than a keen sense of hurt, but with the warmth of Tilly next to her and the weight of the hot chocolate cup in her hands, she remembers her years at the Academy with nothing more than the sweet, vague ache of nostalgia. She shifts a little closer to Tilly and continues, "But I doubt my fellow students there would have cared one way or another about how the hot chocolate tasted. You don't care about how vodka shots taste, do you?"

"Vodka shots? Absolutely not, because I only get those when I want to get totally smashed—oh." Tilly's eyes go wide. “Right. Of course. Because the combination of the theobromine and sucrose levels in chocolate is a Vulcan intoxicant. Wait, but then how did you—”

“I didn’t.” Michael says with a shrug. “Though they didn’t always realize that. Especially during drinking competitions.”

“Michael. I never thought—you never _said_.” Tilly looks delighted. “You cheated your way to victory in drinking competitions at the goddamn _Vulcan Science Academy_? Oh my God. Michael.”

“Can it really be called cheating, if others call my capabilities into question and I simply prove them wrong?" Michael asks archly. "It only worked a couple times with every group, anyways. But when it worked—” she toasts Tilly with her cup. “One point for human physiology. I drank them all under the table.”

“Michael. _Michael_. I didn’t even know they had drinking competitions at the VSA. I thought that all you did was—read astrophysics journals. And debate.”

Michael snorts. “We were all young adults freshly out of our adolescent years. For a lot of the students there, it was their first time living away from their families. We did a lot more than read astrophysics journals and debate, I assure you.” She drains the rest of her hot chocolate and looks down at the empty cup, a smile fighting its way to her lips. “I might’ve been known for lot of things at the VSA, but I was most well-known for being the one who introduced my first-year cohort to chocolate syrup shots.”

“Oh my God, Michael—” Tilly muffled her giggles in Michael’s shoulder, and Michael finds herself laughing too, pressing her face into the sweet cloud of Tilly’s hair.

“I was fortunate in that I have a predilection for desserts in the first place. Though drinking at the VSA did me no favors when I joined the ‘Fleet.”

“ _Michael Burnham_.” Tilly lifts her head from Michael’s shoulder. “You. Are a lightweight?”

Michael makes a show of sighing. “Entirely,” she confesses, and she and Tilly start laughing again, holding each other tight.

\-----

The captain announces that the crew can take the rest of their stay on Chionis III as an informal day of leave. Michael ventures back into the snow with her surveying tricorder in one stubborn hand and a case of sample jars in the other, determined to finish her portion of the surveying. She is not entirely surprised to find most of the Discovery’s crew outside, running around in the freshly-fallen snow.

Tilly bumps into her from behind. “You, me, Jojo and Kay. Snowball fight,” she says, in a voice that gave no room for argument.

“A—snowball fight,” Michael repeats flatly.

Owosekun and Detmer appear next to Tilly, wearing matching parkas. “It’s just like a snow day, isn’t it?” Owosekun says, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “I remember when we had those at school when they couldn’t salt the roads in time.” 

Detmer looks over to Michael. “Team ‘Snow Is Weird’, Commander?” she asks hopefully.

“I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment, Lieutenant,” Michael says. She shows them the tricorder in her hand. “Though you might need to find another ally for your game; I am going to finish the scientific survey.”

The lieutenants tell her she’s welcome to join them at any time and then head off into the white of the open field. Tilly pouts and mutters, “I knew it,” but nevertheless she still hugs Michael and adjusts her scarf for her before hurrying to catch up with Detmer and Owosekun.

Michael works along the edge of the forest, scanning the flora and taking small samples of the plants with high levels of trilithium fluorescence. She sometimes glances back to the main group as she waits for the tricorder to generate its biomass analyses. Tilly has recruited Lieutenant Tyler and Commander Stamets into her snowball fight. Dr. Culber takes off his hat and shoves it onto his husband’s head, tying it tightly despite Stamets' protests before retreating to the sidelines to keep score. Tyler starts drawing up the strategy for his team, calling out positions in relation to the tree line, and Detmer shrieks as her girlfriend pelts her with snow the moment Culber starts the clock. Owosekun’s answering laugh rings through the field.

In five short minutes, the captain has joined in, along with Commander Reno. The commander appears to be rigging a makeshift catapult, to the delight of all.

"Look at you Federation, playing at your children's games," a low voice from behind Michael scoffs.

Michael turns around to see Agent Georgiou glaring at the Discovery's crew, the black of her leather jacket stark against the snow. Her arms are crossed—crossed too tightly, for her usual stance of casual disdain.

"Are you cold, Philippa?" Michael asks mildly.

She fights down a laugh at the agent's scowl and turns back to her surveying.

Tilly comes to find her half an hour later, her cheeks and nose flushed from the cold. There is snow caught in the mess of her curls. “We won!” she announces. 

Tilly’s joy is infectious, clear as the sky and twice as open. It makes Michael's throat ache with her welling fondness."I saw you bombard the captain from here. Very impressive technique."

“I wish you'd been there, Michael, it was so much fun! Kay’s gonna give me another cup of hot chocolate when we get back to the ship for my prize. I can probably wheedle another cup for you out of it, too. You deserve it after doing all the surveying.” Tilly squints at the plant on the branch above them that Michael is scanning. “What’s that?”

“An evergreen vine that bears bioluminescent berries.” Michael scrolls through her tricorder readings. “It appears to be symbiotic with its host plant, drawing some of its nutrients from the host tree while also providing it with a mild toxin that the tree then circulates through its system, protecting itself from a parasitic lichen common in this biome.”

“So—it’s mistletoe,” Tilly says, turning to Michael.

“Not quite. Mistletoe is parasitic and can kill its host tree. This plant protects its host tree.”

“It still looks like mistletoe.”

Michael glances up at the pale berries. “It’s—mistletoe,” she concedes. “A kinder mistletoe.” She sets aside her tricorder and specimen case and holds out her empty hands, and Tilly laces their fingers together, drawing Michael close.

“Do you know about the Earth custom behind mistletoe?” Tilly asks.

“The variety associated with the Western winter holidays originated in Europe and Britain. In ancient and medieval Europe, across multiple cultures, it carried connotations of fertility and was used in a ceremonial capacity—” 

Tilly glares, and Michael grins at her. “Xenoanthropologist, remember?”

"As if you'll ever let me forget," Tilly huffs.

Michael reaches up and tucks a flyaway strand of hair behind Tilly’s ear, letting her hand linger and cup Tilly's cheek. Their shared breath fogs in the sliver of air between their faces. 

"Well?" Tilly asks. Her eyes are bright and shining. "Do you?"

Their noses bump together as Michael leans in. “Due to my extensive xenoanthropological training—" she says, pressing her lips to the tip of Tilly's nose, "—you can rest assured that I know about the Earth customs behind mistletoe." She pulls back enough to brush her lips over the corner of Tilly's mouth. "Including the one you’re thinking of right now.”

They kiss as the snow falls around them, light as laughter against the winter air.


End file.
